Movie buff and security clearance aficionado Eric Pecinovsky, also known as the Vice President of Marketing for ClearanceJobs, joins Lindy Kyzer, director of content at ClearanceJobs and dedicated non-movie watcher to discuss the summer’s hottest film, Oppenheimer. They ask such pivotal questions as – can you have spoilers in a movie made about the atomic bomb? Does a film like Oppenheimer help or hurt the world of national security recruiting? And is this the best film ever made by Christopher Nolan?
Lindy Kyzer:
Hi, this is Lindy Kyzer with ClearanceJobs.com, and welcome to this episode of ClearedCast. Today I’m joined by longtime listener, first time guest, Eric Pecinovsky, who is our Vice President of Marketing. He’s actually been the VP of ClearanceJobs as long as I’ve been around, Eric, for the company. And it’s your first time being on the podcast though, so thank you for joining me today.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Well, no, thank you because ultimately I never felt like I could contribute much to your podcast usually in a sphere that I do not feel like I have the expertise like you and your guests, but now when you’re diving into a little bit of cinema, I feel like I can contribute a little bit here.
Lindy Kyzer:
Oh yeah, I should have introduced the topic first, but start with first things first, Eric, introducing you because you’re the most important part of this. But the reason we’re doing this podcast is because we’ve both been geeking out about Oppenheimer the movie. I finally watched it. You watched it quicker than I did. It did take a time investment of the three hours to find the time for the movie. I am not a cinema buff, so this is a good point, counterpoint for us. I am a bibliophile, but I don’t usually watch movies. I can tell you nothing about film. But you actually are both a security clearance aficionado because you’ve been with ClearanceJobs for a number of years and a movie buff. Correct?
Eric Pecinovsky:
Correct.
Lindy Kyzer:
You kept giving me a hard time about there not being spoilers because we know that the bomb goes off, but does this podcast have spoilers and is it possible to have spoilers in a historical movie? I would still think so. If you’re talking about things that happened in the film, do you not want to learn all about it before you watch it or in this case, because that the bomb goes off, it doesn’t matter? Let’s talk it. We need to lay the ground rules. Are there spoilers in this podcast? Can there be spoilers?
Eric Pecinovsky:
Okay. My opinion, and I stick with my initial opinion, is there are no spoilers. The only spoiler that I think I would’ve had if I hadn’t learned about it upfront was something that you actually wrote about on the site, which is the risque scenes involving his mistress. That would’ve jumped off at me if I was watching the movie, I’m like, oh, I wasn’t ready expecting that. So that would probably the only thing that I would’ve not expected. In terms of spoilers, I obviously didn’t know some of the details. I knew the rough story about it. I knew kind of what happened with his security clearance and obviously the bomb and all that, but it was very at a high level,
Lindy Kyzer:
I had no idea about his whole Red Scare losing his security clearance. My knowledge of Oppenheimer kind of stopped after he made the bomb, and I didn’t know about it until we had an article on the site about the movie coming out and his security clearance revocation, and that was like you said, months back. But I would say previously I history knowledge before, I did not know about the security clearance hearing portion of it, but it was very interesting because literally half of the movie was about his security clearance being revoked and that history. Did you know that prior to the article on ClearanceJobs?
Eric Pecinovsky:
I did, actually. I knew that it was basically done, yes, like you said, from a Red Scare, a little bit of politics in there. We can dive into the security clearance part of this film if you’d like now, because I’ve got lots to say.
Lindy Kyzer:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Don’t wait for hot takes. Tell me now, Eric.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Okay. Yes. From that standpoint, I found a couple things that jumped out at me. As I started thinking about this for our podcast, a couple things came out. One was you saw in the beginning where it was, I think General Groves was talking about he knew about Oppenheimer’s circles that he was in. A lot of it left-leaning, some of it communists right out. A lot of those ideas were pretty common in the 1930s. It wasn’t that obscure at all. And he was the one who initially, if you remember, even in the film, they kind of mentioned the fact that his clearance was dragging and dragging and he couldn’t get it approved, couldn’t get… And then finally what they assumed or what they pushed the narrative on the film was that Groves pushed it through. That he had a lot of sketchy background about who we circled with, but this was the man that he wanted. So he was going to just add a couple phone calls to people and got it through and over the opinion probably of low level security officers.
And I think we can actually apply that to today in that when you’re trying to get the best and brightest, you sometimes have to make exceptions. And that seems to be definitely the case around the Manhattan Project because what a lot of those scientists, not necessarily were communist members, but again, they definitely circled around those circles, they went to meetings that would be considered communist leaning. And a lot of that stuff was kind of saying, yes, that is an issue, but we have a greater project that we need to complete.
So I thought that was very interesting and can be applied to today’s world where you’ve got things around, for instance, I think the main thing that I know something that you write a lot about is marijuana. Some of the best tech folks, a lot of them prefer marijuana versus alcohol. And the question is that really the stance that you want to take? Yes or no? And if you do, you’re going to lose out a lot. Same with foreign entanglements as well, when you’re talking about people who want to be the best in terms of experts in foreign policy. Those people tend to have a lot of foreign entanglements by default. So it is something that you can definitely relate to today’s world.
Lindy Kyzer:
Yeah, no, for sure. And I mean it ties into current events pretty tight, I would say when it comes to academia and the issues right now with obtaining a security clearance. And like you said, it’s applicable just because the security clearance process is not cut and dry around a lot of issues and political leanings are going to be one of them. And that’s where it’s super unfortunate with the revocation because it just kind of shows the changing perceptions around him and his own policies or what actually cost him a security clearance. So it’s like they needed his knowledge to build a bomb, and then once it was over, they no longer really agreed with his perspective, which probably was not really any different. And that was one of the things.
I thought the acting in the movie was fantastic. And again, I don’t actually know other films that these people are in, other than Matt Damon, obviously, Matt Damon. But I don’t know a lot of the… I’m not a cinema buff, but I thought every character was portrayed super well, and you saw how, like you said, Groves pushing it through and then Strauss wanting it to be removed. Individual folks could have a pretty significant influence just on one person’s ability to obtain a security clearance.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Well, and like you said, when they finally flashed forward to when they were having the hearing, there was a couple of interesting parts. One, his background really never changed. I mean, he was the same person, really, at least was applied in the film and I think historically was documented that he was kind of going against the government policy of more bombs, bigger bombs, and we can’t stop. And he was kind of pushing back on that, and a lot of people did not really agree with that. Plus he had made just some enemies in the past as well. And then the Red Scare and that all kind of built up to the fact that we can get this guy removed from conversations that influence government policy.
Lindy Kyzer:
One of my favorite parts of the film is how heavily they relied on the actual historical data. And it’s based on a biography that was a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Oppenheimer, and it’s super interesting. But the fact that he was in that hearing room for something like 27 hours, they visually showed that very well, different people coming in and testifying. So I just think about, for me, it makes me feel very sad about the process. Now, I need Perry Russell Hunter to tell me that doesn’t happen anymore. And I actually know it does. It doesn’t happen anymore.
But we have due process around it now, and I think that’s a good sign of the way that they handled this at that time was awful. But to think about having intimate details of your life and having all of these character references show up, and it really was a weird confluence of a criminal hearing, but not criminal at all because it was just a policy procedural hearing. And again, I think they showed that really well, and I think people would be surprised to know that, I mean, that happened. That’s not how it should happen or how it happens today, but probably because of his role and his prominence and the way, again, it was very politically motivated to remove his eligibility. It was 27 hours and the film, they pulled a lot of dialogue straight from those hearings.
Eric Pecinovsky:
And that is one thing that amazed me. I didn’t realize how quickly it happened, but within a year, the transcript was released to the public. He was under the assumption that this was a private hearing and everything was confidential and that only the people who would need to know would read these transcripts. And within a year it was released publicly. And so like you just said, his whole life was out there in these transcripts. And if the three-hour movie isn’t enough, or I’m guessing Lindy, the book is like 300 pages. I don’t know how long it is that you are reading.
Lindy Kyzer:
500 pages, Eric, I’m in it to win it. 500 pages.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Okay, 500 pages. If that’s not enough for you, online, you can find all 27 hours of transcripts online and read question and answer, question and answer and probably take you, I don’t know, a few weeks or a few months or whatever to read all thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts.
Lindy Kyzer:
And it was like a character assassination, that part of it does… it does make you very frustrated to watch just because he was brilliant and he made a significant contribution, regardless of how you feel about that. I have some friends who are like, “I don’t like the atomic bomb. I’m not going to see the movie.” I’m like, “Well, that’s…” I don’t think it’s like a atomic bomb film. I think you can still watch it, but whatever.
But regardless of how you felt about it or feel about his story, watching that and seeing the character assassination piece of it that happened, yeah, it was super painful to watch and to think about. And to know that again, that all should be covered by the Privacy Act theoretically, but the Red Scare was truly the wild wild west. So I feel like you do have to have a disclaimer here, Eric, this is not how the process is today. That ties into one of my, this is security clearance… ClearanceJobs.com. We like our security clearance professionals, but that ties into do you think this film is… I’ve seen several debates about this online. Do you think it’s good for national security? It’s certainly generating a ton of interest in the box office. Do you think it’s good for national security hiring? Or what does a film like this do for our industry?
Eric Pecinovsky:
I think, actually, I’m going to give the lawyer answer of it depends on the way you look at it. On one hand, like you said, the way that he was treated would obviously push you off. But again, that was in the fifties, like you said, Red Scare. I mean, it was just a very different time. There weren’t due process a lot. There weren’t privacy standards around a lot of things. So it’s changed a lot.
But what I do think it did show, which we push a lot on ClearanceJobs, is the mission that you’re part of. And he was really, really committed to this project and knew that they had to be first over anybody else in the world to make this happen because they alluded to in the film with nuclear fission happening and the academic paper, it was just a matter of time for other scientists in other countries to put two and two together and it was going to happen, and it was just a matter of who was going to get there first. And that really drove him. And he was on, obviously, the cutting edge of a lot of science, was very influential and made a difference. And I think that can be applied to many positions within the cleared world.
Lindy Kyzer:
I’m same, again, I’m in marketing, so I feel like there’s no such thing as bad press. I’m going to lean heavily into that mindset. And I do think watching the film, you get the notion of how the most brilliant minds came together to solve this big problem. I think the national security community is trying to make that same case today for what’s going on and struggling with the same problems. I just got off a call with NATO and the Five Eyes countries talking about information sharing and personnel sharing, and it just reminded me that we were having this conversation right after, because there is a lot of tie in there with saying, hey, what if you’re from another country or you have this knowledge, how do we share our best and brightest?
Because that was a big part of Oppenheimer’s issue that came up in the hearings too, is he had traveled internationally a lot. He had professionally interacted with people from these now hostile countries to the US. And so you pretty much have the same dynamic now. So what do you do with the person who has developed their institutional knowledge overseas and now comes back and literally has the exact knowledge set that you need, but you still have to find a way to vet them? So for me, it shows the importance of the mission. It shows also too the complexity because it is very difficult to figure out who is the Oppenheimer who you want to give a security clearance to and who has a lot of international entanglements, but still has a close allegiance or alliance to the US. And how do you figure out the Robert Hansons who are just going to steal your secrets for decades and you’re not going to know? It is a very difficult problem.
Eric Pecinovsky:
I don’t have, like you said, I think it is a balance, and that goes back to the diversity or getting the best and the brightest and having to make exceptions is it’s always going to be a balance. And I don’t think anyone knows what the balance is. And like you said, it sometimes depends just on the person. The person on paper could look perfect and no foreign entanglements and lived a somewhat normal life of always in the US no foreign connections, no travel, et cetera. And then, like you said, turns out to be a Robert Hanson situation and for other reasons they commit espionage.
Lindy Kyzer:
It’s a tough balancing act to pull for the personnel vetting program. But I think what you see is anytime you look at something and it’s politically motivated like this, I don’t know, I hope that today, we do better than this. And I think we do. I think we have due process around it. I also think sometimes we lack maybe the efficiency to quickly onboard all of the people that we need, but I do think we live with more transparency certainly than we did back then in the sense of you potentially, I would hope, wouldn’t see this happening.
Although again, a part of the reason that probably with Oppenheimer, I did like the dynamics between his wife that you had during the film, because she really wanted him to fight. I think his perspective was just that he wanted to keep, I don’t know if he had confidence in the process. I think it’s just personality comes into it with a lot of this, and he just let the cards fall where they were. And because he didn’t play the political game probably and lobby people to advocate for him, he ended up losing his security clearance. So yeah, I would like to think that that couldn’t happen today, although as I verbally processed it, I’m pretty sure it could if somebody was not willing to advocate for themselves.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Yeah, I mean I think it mentioned a few times, I can’t remember if it was in the movie, it’s kind of blurring me. I mentioned to you, Lindy, that I watched a documentary after this, but the fact that he was a little bit naive, not a very good bureaucrat, sometimes opened his mouth and said things he probably shouldn’t have that made enemies and other instances like that. So I think he was a little naive to think that what he said meant nothing, when in fact it did. I did think of something that, again, not significant, but something that I did not know and I loved learning, which was how did we end up in Los Alamos?
Lindy Kyzer:
He had land there. Right?
Eric Pecinovsky:
Exactly. I never knew that. The fact that he had such a strong connection to New Mexico, like you said, had a ranch there, had always gone out there, loved to ride horses. I mean, think about that, father of the atomic bomb, and he also likes to ride horses in New Mexico. I didn’t realize that that’s how he pushed for it to be there because he loved being in the New Mexico desert. I had no clue that that was what happened.
Lindy Kyzer:
When you think about it though, it was the perfect location. I mean, I think he was doing his research in Berkeley and in California at the time, and there were a lot of researchers that were based on these university campuses and in these major metropolitan areas. And he probably had an idea in his head, if we’re going to build a giant bomb, where can we actually test it and set it off? And the desert was the place. I found that very altruistic of him, because if I was him… because he had this longstanding, I mean he had owned land in that area for a long time. It was kind of his personal oasis. I wonder if he knew it was going to turn into a major military epicenter when he did that. I don’t know. Did your documentary address that? I haven’t got to that part of the book. I don’t know how he felt about.
Eric Pecinovsky:
No, no, it didn’t address that.
Lindy Kyzer:
I hope he got a good cash incentive. Not that he needed the money because he came from an affluent family, but it was very interesting that he used his own personal land and suggested it as the place where they ended up building this, and now it’s kind of a very significant historical and military area because of that random connection that he had.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Do we want to touch on, I know this could be sensitive because I’m sure we do not like to partake in conspiracy theories, but do we want to mention the part where his mistress, Jean, where she had committed suicide and there seemed to have been a flash of a hand in that scene?
Lindy Kyzer:
Oh yeah. See, this is what I would consider a spoiler, Eric.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Oh, sorry.
Lindy Kyzer:
Right? No, I mean, yeah, no, I think that’s interesting. And I have not gone down the rabbit trail. I mean, it seems like they documented clearly that she struggled with depression and she was a very depressed and this was just known. So I think the notion of why would somebody have killed her, Eric-
Eric Pecinovsky:
Well, so-
Lindy Kyzer:
… is the conspiracy theory.
Eric Pecinovsky:
… I know. Hold on. I can save you going through the rabbit hole, Lindy, because I don’t know if you’ll be surprised or not, but I went down this rabbit hole and there was some interesting… again, it’s obviously coincidences at this point. Nothing obviously established. More so just you nod your head and you go, interesting. So do you remember Casey Affleck in his role, and he was the, at the time Army counterintelligence, he had done a brief interview with Oppenheimer talking about have you had any contacts or been approached? And that was part of the reason why he kind of got into additional trouble is because he said that his friends were approached but not him. And he had, I believe, testified against Oppenheimer. In any case, this same guy, and his name was Bash, he eventually turned up in the Church Committee during the 1970s, the CIA investigations, which was interesting to me about him being part of potentially some of the sketchy stuff that was going on in the sixties and fifties.
Lindy Kyzer:
The CIA doesn’t kill people, Eric.
Eric Pecinovsky:
I know.
Lindy Kyzer:
Don’t tell me that. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not a big conspiracy theory person, so I’m definitely more the depressed mix of medication and… I mean, the film did take a… I have not, again, read enough about it, so you probably out researched me on this to know what the details of her death were and how suspicious it was. Because I did get the takeaway that it was somewhat inconclusive, which I suppose could lend itself to conspiracy theories around it.
Eric Pecinovsky:
I think your words were correct in that it was legitimate, but also kind of unique in the way that she did it. So again, possible, unique, no other evidence so you just kind of go on.
Lindy Kyzer:
I’m going to say it wasn’t, but I don’t know. I’m going to dig into this one a little bit more, see who knew Oppenheimer, man, full of rabbit trails for us.
Eric Pecinovsky:
But I agree with you what you initially said, which was why would she need to be killed anyway? I don’t really see a good argument as to why.
Lindy Kyzer:
The issue around, I mean, so much of the research at that time, and that was like you saw how… I did appreciate how the film talked about, because so much of it ties into our current intelligence sharing apparatus. They have several times where they’re talking about how they were trying to build the atomic bomb with these stove-pipes of information and the key compartmentalization, we know that word all the time in the IC, and they kept talking about compartmentalization and Oppenheimer kept bulldozing through the compartmentalization and meeting with different people. And it just shows the way that the security clearance process is built and works typically flies directly in the face of innovation and research and advancement. And so we kind of always have a bit of a tension point. And I think that’s why now we have this big rise in OSINT, right? We want to do more with open source because then they can bulldoze through all of those compartmentalizations that you have in the IC.
But yeah, if you’re a security clearance nerd, I mean, I feel like you’re going to nerd out in so many parts of this film because if you’ve worked in the intelligence community at any point or followed it, you’re going to see so many things that are like, oh, that is. That’s how it’s done. That’s a pain point. And that’s actually how they did things differently to accomplish what they were trying to accomplish. And I thought the film did a good job of being true to the actual story and narrative around that.
Eric, so you’re a cinema guy. I’m not. How does this compare to other Christopher Nolan films? Can we talk to that a little bit? I don’t even know any other films that he has done.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Well, you may know, you just may not realize you know. I would say for me personally, I am a little bit biased toward historical cinema. I would say that for me, this probably ranks in the top three. I would say I still love Dunkirk the most. And then it’s probably Interstellar and then Oppenheimer. Have you seen any of those, Lindy?
Lindy Kyzer:
I’ve seen Interstellar, yes. I’ve not seen Dunkirk. I’ve heard of it. It’s on my list. I know. I just don’t watch… I’m not good at movies. I did see the Barbie movie though, which, have you seen the Barbie movie yet, Eric?
Eric Pecinovsky:
I have not, no. Oh, the one thing that we didn’t address when it comes to this movie, I knew it was going to be good. I knew not only the reviews, but Christopher Nolan never puts out a really bad movie. He’s regarded as one of the best directors at this point in time. But I was still amazed at the subject matter that he had to use. And the fact that it was a three-hour movie, that it just, the beats came fast. You didn’t have time to space off. You know what I mean? It just kept coming at you and at you and at you, and again, for the subject matter. It’s not like there was car crashes or car chases or gunfights or firefights or anything like that. I never lost attention to the movie and the three hours flew by from me.
Lindy Kyzer:
If the length of the film is holding you back, I think that absolutely should not. And I do think also too, I made an effort. I made an effort. I packed my ClearanceJobs tumbler with some wine to go, some emotional support wine, and I went by myself to watch it. Because I’m a mom and getting to the movie theater does not happen for me. And I knew I was going to miss it. Because that has happened before. I’m like, oh, I want to see this in the theater. It’s not for me. I made an effort to see it in the theater because it was a movie that was made for the theater. And I will say if Oppenheimer did anything, I feel like it showed, cinema does have a place, there are films that are worth going to the movies to see. I know a lot of friends who are like, “Oh, I’ll just wait and stream it later,” because that’s our default answer now. But I think this is one that, because of the content and the way he filmed it, he really made a good case for getting people back to the movie theater to watch a movie because it was an impressive film to actually watch in the theater.
Eric Pecinovsky:
I agree.
Lindy Kyzer:
So clearly Eric and I, I mean, what’s our star rating? Four or five stars? I give it the maximum number of stars, whatever our ranking is, highly recommend Oppenheimer.
Eric Pecinovsky:
Yes. It would likely be the best or the top two or three best films of the year.
Lindy Kyzer:
Got to be the best film of the year. I mean, I have to say, if anything comes close to topping it, I will be shocked. I thought it was good. I think it was good for our industry, for our community. I think any time we can convince people what’s going on in national security, even when it makes the government look bad, I think that is one of the true benefits. This is why we’re better than China because we learn from our mistakes because we can criticize ourselves. Because you can have a film like this, it’s like we did this thing that was terrible back in the 1950s. We’ve learned.
Eric Pecinovsky:
I think, like I said, the mission and the excitement. And the other thing that you mentioned when you said better than other countries, it was a quick sentence or two, it was very in passing. But I think it was Oppenheimer, when they were initially talking, him and Groves were talking about how Germany has a 12 month headstart and he says, “No 18 month headstart.” And I think something to the effect of is Groves, “Well, how are we going to catch up? 18 months?” And he said, “Because,” he said, “Hitler doesn’t trust the Jews and the Jews are the best scientists in Germany.”
So there is something about keeping, again, diversity best and brightest. Anytime you’re excluding groups because of your views, it is a detriment to the advancement of what you’re trying to accomplish. I think that is one of the great things about America is that we are so diverse. We bring in immigrants every year. Some of them end up starting large companies, contributing huge roles into government, all sorts of things. And that’s something that Germany was not obviously willing to do.
Lindy Kyzer:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think the strength of the teams that we can put together, our trust in our workforce, our alliances and partnerships, our diversity of thinking and willing to try new concepts and innovate. I do think the US, I hope always has that advantage. I think that the same one that they had back then is definitely the one that we have today. We talk a lot about the risks geopolitically because we have these major threat actors, but exactly what you said, we also have a lot of advantages.
Look at us, man. Go see Oppenheimer, it’ll give you renewed faith in America. Even though it’s super depressing, it’ll also make you optimistic, just for what Eric has said. And even Oppenheimer, he didn’t give up on the country too. A lot of people encouraged him to move and take his scientific brain elsewhere. He could have packed up and sold his wares, pulled a Snowden, gone to Russia or something. And he literally, that was a line that they had in the movie is, “I love this country damn it.” He could have gone somewhere else. He had made an investment in the US and he didn’t take his brilliant brain capacity somewhere else. So I thought that was great, too.
Eric and I say go see Oppenheimer.
